We see here an upside-down globe representing the oceans and blank space where the continents are, but no countries. The globe is illuminated from the inside, with the illumination coming through the missing land mass, and projecting onto the walls, floor and ceiling of the gallery. The gallery being cubical, the projections are distorted.

Various organizations have advocated to replace the 16th-century Mercator map projection (what we use conventionally) with accurate alternatives like the Equal E arth projection to correct distorted representations of landmass sizes. Critics argue that the Mercator projection (on top of the gallery) perpetuates a Eurocentric, colonial worldview by severely shrinking the size of the global south relative to northern continents.

This is not a new idea. Even in the 1500s people were aware of the problem of flattening a sphere without distortion. This of course also touches on a problem in photography and drawing, as well as point of view; the question of “translating” a 3D reality into a 2D representation. Equally, the designations north, south, east and west are relative to where one stands on earth.

The name Mazzocchio in the title refers to a Florentine hat that seems to have obsessed Paolo Uccello, an early renaissance artist who helped develop linear perspective. In his 1448 fresco “The Flood and Waters Subsiding” a drowning man also has a checkered mazzocchio that has fallen off his head and onto his shoulders, resembling a life preserver around his neck. This could relate to the "torus theory of the world": a speculative topological model of the universe's overall shape resembling a doughnut or even a bagel.

The Mazzocchio is here encircling the Proxy Gallery at the bottom outside, suggesting that a) the gallery resembles a head and b) that the map (and head) are upside down. The whole installation also calls attention to the gallery as a cube, visible simultaneously from the inside and outside, and the artist’s ambition to represent something metaphorically and literally global without regard to “real” size.